Tag: legacy

I’m on vacation with my dad this next week or two. He’s led an amazing life and we are spending time, between pina coladas and trips to the mainland, working on his memoirs. He’s big into cruises and so we are spending time in the sun together.

As I write this it is still Thursday and the trip is still in the future. I am unsure how it will all shake out but I am fairly certain it will be an enjoyable time with my dad, laughing and talking and reliving a lifetime of memories. This in itself will probably turn into part of the story, part of the adventure.

For me, life has always been about stories. I do a great deal of public speaking and no one tends to remember the amazing insights I have trolled the internet and my library. Tell a good story, however, and people remember it forever. When I have occasion to listen to other speakers, or go to church, I am constantly surprised by how few good stories I hear. For some reason orators have a tendency to believe that I am there to glean information. While this may be true in principle, it is the stories I remember. Perhaps this is one of the reasons people tend to go to church less than they once did, the world has become about sound bytes and tweets and updates and the religious community is still convinced that forty-five minute monologues are sacred and unchangeable. And let’s be honest, most sermonizers I know are only moderately interesting or talented to begin with. There are not many Churchills, or Martin Luther Kings, or Campolos out there.

My father, however, has a lifetime of good stories. Stories too amusing or insightful to let die. In spite of appearing caucasian now, he was actually born a “poor black child”, literally. His mother had a kidney infection and he came out of the womb black as night. He grew up as an orphan, his father died soon after his birth, falling from a skyscraper a few days before he took a different job. His mother died when he was eleven and he wasn’t allowed to see her in the hospital for the six months before she passed because of some asinine policy. A nurse managed to sneak him in on one occasion only.

My dad quit high school to join the air force. After telling an officer to politely “go to hell” he was assured that he would never be promoted beyond corporal. He retired at the highest rank available, in charge of the ground forces at his european base, then the last man to turn out the lights when his last base closed. In the meantime he received the military equivalent of the Order Of Canada for a myriad of reasons. He did alright for an orphan high school drop-out. He is a hero to his grandchildren and pretty tops in my books as well.

I wonder, sometimes, what kind of legacy I will leave when I shuffle off this mortal plain. I hope they will be able to say of me, “at least he tried”.

In 2002 I was a single parent, hurting, lonely, visiting Winnipeg, the city of my childhood. Alone.
I was at a conference downtown but felt a nostalgic need to drive for an hour in traffic to go back and remember. So there I was, driving down a road I had walked hundreds of times, decades ago. I had never been back. It was the time, elementary school, when everything was possible and I knew I was going to be significant.

Now years later, looking back on a shattered life and broken dreams, I drove back in time to my old elementary school. It was much as I had remembered it, only a great deal smaller. I remembered it as a happy place, a loud adventure full of girls and bullies and games and sports. But now, so many years later, I was back walking down empty hallways and bad preteen crayon art. I wasn’t sure why I was there but for some reason was drawn down those hallways, looking like a middle-aged creeper with too much time on his hands.

As I passed the trophy case I was struck by it’s emptiness. Someone had obviously been cleaning out the old pictures, painting and rearranging. Even today I still wonder if it really happened and still do not completely understand it’s meaning, if there even is one.

You might be able to guess what was in that window, it unfolded like a movie – There was only one photo in that display case that day – yellowed by age, bad haircuts and knobby knees. There I was, grade six volleyball team. Only one picture in that case, twenty or more years later. Why? It was a one in a million, a ridiculous proposition, a hollywood story.

I still don’t know why, or even if there is a why. I only know I was feeling alone one day, insignificant and small. And in the midst of that insecurity there was a gift, a single moment out of time and a reminder that I mattered. hundreds of teams, dozens of years, an old picture that could not fit in a small display case needed by this years teams. A ten foot picture frame with only one picture…

It is easy to believe we don’t matter in a world of superstars and the super rich. When we die will anyone remember us, mourn us? Many of us, as we grow older, ponder what legacy we will leave, if any. Many become discouraged by the brevity and seeming meaningless of life.

Do we matter?

I am inspired by the story of Rosa Parks, an average nobody who changed her world because she “was tired of giving in to white people.” Like many of us I get tired of hearing of yet another person born in privilege being noticed just because their family or circumstance gave them a platform. Rosa showed us that even a regular person can leave a powerful legacy if they live their life with integrity and purpose.

This spring I am spending a few weeks with my father editing his memoirs while basking in the sunshine. He too has left a powerful legacy of perseverance and integrity for the following generations though being an orphan who was not given many breaks in life. He may not ever be world famous but he is living proof that you don’t have to have a Harvard degree or reality television series to impact the lives of people in your world.

Do we matter?

Yes you do. Don’t settle for a mediocre life.

As Tony Campolo is fond of saying, “Most of us are tiptoeing through life so we can reach death safely. We grew up praying, “If I should die before I wake. Maybe we should be praying, “If I should wake before I die. . . .” Life can get away from you.